


Relinquished

by OhCaptainMyCaptain



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, And Prove Himself, Bad first impression, Bottom Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Bucky Has To Fight For Steve, Cause Steve Has A LOT of Trust Issues, Comfort/Angst, Dom Bucky Barnes, Dom/sub, Eventual Powerbottom Bucky, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Minor References to Past Violence, Post-WS looking Bucky, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Reference to M/M/F Threesome in First Chapter, Safe Sane and Consensual, Sexual Tension, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Specific Relevant Tags Will Be Added To The Beginning of Every Chapter, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Strangers to Lovers, Sub Steve Rogers, Switching, Top Bucky Barnes, Trust Issues, gentle dom Bucky, past sexual trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 20:00:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3501044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhCaptainMyCaptain/pseuds/OhCaptainMyCaptain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Alternate universe where everyone is born a Dom, a sub, or a Switch. Beyond that, the world - and the relationships between people - still functions the same way as it normally would.)</p><p>Bucky Barnes is a well-established man with a good career, a charming smile, and quite the reputation for being popular with men and women alike. However, part of the mystery that seems to surround him is the fact that he's never had a real relationship - and thus, a sub - before. Only his close friends who truly know him understand that it's because Bucky's a complete romantic at heart, and has been waiting all this time for "The One". </p><p>Steve Rogers is the feisty, stubborn, and distrusting sub who has sworn never to get involved in another relationship again, thanks to a certain traumatic past experience. Loyal to his friends but wary of the rest of the world, it would take a <em>lot</em> to break down the walls he's put up over the years.</p><p>The first time Bucky ever sees Steve, it's love at first sight.</p><p>Unfortunately, the first time Steve ever sees Bucky is when he almost gets run over by his car.</p><p>Needless to say, winning Steve over is going to take a lot of work. Luckily, Bucky's determined to try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relinquished

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kellyscams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kellyscams/gifts).



> I would like to thank my dear friend, who has respectfully wished to remain anonymous, for commissioning this fic. I've been sitting on this idea for a long, long time and finally have the chance to explore it. Chapters will be updated a little slow at first, since I am also still working on _After Hours_ , as well as other commission fics that will be taking priority (along with this one) for the next couple months. However, I would like to loosely aim for a new chapter of this to be posted every two weeks or so, as I have the majority of the plot planned out already.
> 
> I also have the one and only [thebestpersonherelovesbucky](thebestpersonherelovesbucky.tumblr.com) for having been such a sounding board for me when I was initially working out the kinks in the world-building, and generally just getting my ideas for this fic from my brain into words. Her, along with [shanology](shanology.tumblr.com), were both just complete life savers when it came to reading chapter for me before it got posted, as well as letting me flail at them constantly with all my plans for the rest of the plot. I am _nothing_ without my friends. They are just as much - if not more - responsible for my stories as I am. <3
> 
> For those of you who follow my blog, you will know that I've been going through a rough time lately (especially in the last few weeks). For this reason, I would like to respectfully ask NOT to receive concrit for this story. Any other time and I'm 100% fine to receive it, and always take it to heart and appreciate the efforts to help me grow as a writer. However, at this current point in time, writing is the only thing giving me any sort of reprieve from the real world, and I need it to be as positive a thing for me right now as possible. Having said that, if there are any questions or clarification that you may have, feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer you to the best of my abilities :) Thank you for understanding. <3
> 
> Usually I add all of the relevant tags in the Tagging section, but for this story, all minor tags relevant to specific chapters will be included at the BEGINNING of each chapter. Down the road, when Steve eventually opens up more about his past trauma, I will add the appropriate tag to the fic itself. For now, I don't want to drown the story's overview with a billion tags, haha.
> 
> And as always, my [Tumblr](http://ohcaptainmycaptain1918.tumblr.com/) is basically a place for Stucky, Sebastian Stan, Chris Evans, Marvel, smut, or inappropriate humor - so if you feel like coming and hanging out with me, please do <3
> 
> **Warnings/Tags for this chapter: (1) 3 minor references to past domestic abuse; (2) reference to a M/M/F threesome. Steve's flashbacks to the traumatic memories in questions are always placed within parenthesis and are written entirely in italics, so skip past each one if it will make you uncomfortable. None are long in terms of actual length.**

Today’s one of those days where Steve Rogers wishes he could  _pick_ these sorts of things.

The erection between his legs isn’t what wakes him up, though it’s pained and straining from beneath his pajama pants and probably would’ve gotten to him eventually. Rather, it’s the slight and steady coiling in his belly from the heat pooling there that does it – a biological reaction that he can control about as much as his heart beating. He’s been triggered, body before mind, and that’s the only reason he’s startled awake before his alarm’s set to go off. It’s a pain in the ass when this happens.

It’s never an overly peaceful way of waking up, either. Sort of feels like you’ve just been given a heavy shove back into consciousness, where your eyes fly open with a sharp inhale and you’re going tense all over. Alert. On guard and disoriented. Then the endorphins and the arousal catch up with him seconds later, and the first thing Steve thinks is that he doesn’t know  _why_ his body’s doing this, but he’s horny as sin.  _God damnit._

Then the sound of Sam having a one-sided argument from the living room reaches his ears, and it quickly makes sense. Groaning, Steve buries his face deeper into his pillow, hoping whatever conversation his friend is having will soon be over. He must be on the phone. From what Steve’s catching, it’s probably with his boss. They’re best friends – they talk a lot – so Steve can already guess what it’s about. Sam’s been getting dicked around quite a bit lately by one of his managers, and at Steve’s encouragement, sounds like he’s finally standing up for himself.

Steve just wishes he wasn’t using  _that_ tone of voice right now. Stern… Aggressive… Controlled, even in his anger. Sam rarely gets like this because he’s such a peaceful, kind man by nature – so when he does, it’s impossible for Steve’s body not to respond to it, even if his mind remains unaffected. It’s not like he reacts this way with  _all_ Dom(me)s; not like, if he walks down the street and some asshole starts talking a certain way, Steve’s automatically getting the desire to drop to his knees and yield for them.

It’s only because he knows Sam,  _trusts_ him… Hell, if it weren’t for the fact that they’ve been friends for so long that the way they feel about each other would never cross the boundary beyond  _platonic_ , Steve might’ve even considered Sam to be the type of Dom he’d want in his life. Friendly, trustworthy, not too extreme – wouldn’t try to go forcing Steve to be someone he isn’t, or do anything he didn’t want to do.

Not that he even  _wants_ one these days, mind you. He’s perfectly happy alone; in fact, he prefers it. If he’s not in a relationship  _period_ then there’s never the risk of getting your heart broken ( _or your body, battered_ …). The last time he willingly became someone’s submissive, he got more than his fill to last him a lifetime. The day he finally got out of that relationship –  _going on six years this August, actually; wow, has it really been that long?_ – was the day he decided that he’d sooner be damned than ever accept a collar from someone again.

_No thanks._

By the grace of god, he can hear the phone call in the living room coming to an end. Steve glances to his clock and resigns with himself to get up, even though he doesn’t really have to for another half hour. He’s the type of person that once he’s up, he’s  _up_. So he pulls the covers off and focuses on one task at a time – in this case:  _get out of bed, grab things for a shower, shower_ ,and so on and so forth.

This way, by keeping focused, he can ignore the dull buzzing still making his body feel like it’s pulsing all the way down to his toes. It’s a nuisance sometimes when this sort of thing happens, but by no means the end of the world. Just gotta reclaim that  _mind over matter_ mantra and not pay it any attention. Steve’s become quite the master at willing away that automatic feeling of  _desire_  whenever his body gets triggered.

Crawling out of bed, he grabs a clean towel and wraps it over his shoulders. Scratching the back of his head lazily, he plucks up his glasses from his night table and shoves them onto the bridge of his nose. After that, he does what he  _always_ does every day when he gets up, and takes his two morning puffs from his inhaler. Then he heads to the door and stills. He listens carefully for the quiet now filling the apartment and, judging the coast to be clear, opens his bedroom door and pads out into the hallway.

Sam’s sitting on the couch, watching TV. When Steve walks into view, he glances up to him and offers an apologetic smile. “Sorry man, I didn’t wake you, did I?” he asks. It’s a rhetorical question and he’s got to know it. He hadn’t exactly kept it down, even if he hadn’t meant to wake Steve up either.

Steve shrugs, returning the half-smile. “How’d it go with the boss man?”

“Well. I think I got my point across, so… hopefully they stop booking me on my days off. Swear to God, man, I’m certain that they were singling me out. Like, I’m pretty sure I was the only guy they kept making pick up everyone else’s shifts.”

 _Now_ he notices the uncontrollable flush only  _just_ starting to fade from Steve’s chest. He knows better than to look down, and he’s not the kind of guy who’d do that anyways. But it’s ingrained in his DNA to be able to pick up on these sorts of signs, so things click for him pretty quickly.

“Aw Jesus, dude, I’m sorry,” he apologizes genuinely, sighing as he averts his eyes away. “I should’ve kept my voice down. I wasn’t thinking.”

It’s not the first time this has happened, and Steve knows it won’t be the last. Accidents happen. Neither can really be blamed for it. It’s just as much Sam’s fault as it is  _Steve’s_ , when he lets Sam help him with something and he notices the slight dilation in his friend’s pupils after it’s done (even if it’s a task as simple as wrestling open a stubborn lid that’s causing Steve problems). Neither one of them triggers the other – the few times it admittedly happens here and there – because they  _mean_ to. All they’re doing is being themselves; behaving  _normally_.

The fact that the other sometimes gets an involuntary response to it is out of their hands, really. The way their brains are hardwired has no bearing on their feelings towards each other, and that’s the important thing they both understand. For Steve, that’s why it doesn’t bother him if this happens from time to time. It’s just the nature of who they are.

“You don’t gotta apologize,” Steve replies in earnest (though he also can’t help from subtly tugging his towel across his chest to hide the evidence). “Nothin’ a cold shower won’t fix. It’s already starting to go away anyways.  _So_ , anyway, I was gonna run downstairs after and grab an éclair before my shift. Did ya want one?”

Just like that, the slightly awkward air around them dissipates and returns to normal. Sam grins as he lifts the remote and starts browsing through the guide for something better to put on. “I don’t know  _how_ you eat one of those things every morning and never seem to put on a pound. I feel like I need to either be envious or worried for your health. You’re gonna get diabetes if you don’t start eating more greens.”

“Then I’ll grab a Granny Smith on my way to work, too,” Steve jokes, turning to head for the bathroom.

“You know, your mom would’ve killed me if she knew I was letting you get away with such a shitty diet.”

“Thank god you’re not my babysitter then, huh?” Steve calls back good-naturedly. Just at the mere mention, his defense mechanism kicks in as he brushes off the thought of his mother as briskly as he’s always known how to, ever since the day they buried her body into the ground when he was eighteen. For as close as he is to Sam, it’s never a topic he lets his friend see his real feelings about. Clearing his throat softly, he keeps his voice easygoing as he adds, “So is that a  _no_ then?”

“I never said that,” he hears Sam call back.

“And there you were, givin’ me the gears, you big hypocrite. Well, you got about ten minutes to make up your mind, Wilson!” Steve answers, flipping on the light switch and closing the bathroom door behind him.

To his delight, his erection is already mostly gone by the time he’s stepping into the shower.

* * *

_Ninety-six… Ninety-seven… Ninety-eight… Ninety-nine… One-hundred._  

On the other side of Brooklyn, Bucky Barnes releases the heavy breath in his lungs, carefully uncurling his left arm from behind his back to find his balance on the floor. He  _could_ always use both hands, but the left one gives him an unfair advantage, and then Arm Day sort of feels like a waste; never really feeling like a full, satisfying workout. Stomach clenched and the muscles in his right arm trembling the way he likes –  _lets him know he did a good job_ – he bends his knee and finds his footing, pushing himself back up into a standing position.

He spares a glance at the clock on his stove when he heads into the kitchen, sipping from his bottle of water and going to the fridge to pull out stuff for breakfast. It’s barely eight a.m. That should never be a surprise to him anymore, but he rolls his eyes to himself regardless, despite no one being there to see it.

He wasn’t always a morning person. Technically, he still wouldn’t ever count himself as one. Sometimes he jokes to Tony that it’s hardly fair that  _he’s_ forced to go into work before noon when Tony himself doesn’t show up until well past two or three. But his friend always replies something along the lines of, “ _Well, that’s the perk of being my own boss, Robocop: I get to make my own rules._ ”

If Bucky had it his way, he’d only work evenings and not a minute sooner. Not that he has much room to complain – the fact that he’d been offered the job as Archivist at Stark Industries in the first place, all those years ago, had been a kindness. Tony never had to do that for him, but he did, and Bucky’s never been anything shy of grateful. It pays well (pays fucking  _phenomenally,_ actually), gives him benefits, and allows him the joys of mixing business with pleasure,  _frequently._

It can be tiring, not just being friends with Tony Stark, but also being his employee. What it amounts to is long days at work, followed by some nights with even longer partying. The past few weeks have been sort of quiet in that respect, but only because his boss is heavily involved in trying to lock down a contract with a new, prospective client. No matter how much Tony loves a good bash (especially ones with his name attached), he’s still a businessman. Bucky and the others at the company don’t tend to see him much around these times, until things settle down again.

Much as Bucky likes the parties, he’s not going to lie: he’s thankful to have some reprieve from them, too. Tony’s cool –  _they’ve been friends since his first year of college_ – and most of the time, a lot of the others Bucky’s forced to mingle with are cool, too. But there’s always that particular crowd he’d rather  _not_ have to interact with… The upscale, snooty elitists who love to flaunt their assets and, more disgustingly, flaunt their subs.

It’s uncomfortable is what it is. Even Tony finds it just as distasteful; still treats them politely at face-value, of course, because how those people behave in their private relationships is none of their business. But he agrees with Bucky, when they mutter amongst themselves privately from the sidelines. “If it wasn’t for the fact that they’re some of our biggest clients, I’d never invite them here,” Tony will always comment. Bucky will just hum flatly and choose to respond only by taking a sip from his drink, rather than opening his mouth and adding his own commentary. There wouldn’t be a point anyways.

Because those people, they think because they have  _power_ and they have the  _dough_ to back it up, that they’re entitled to treat their subs however they want. Sometimes, it makes Bucky want to pull one of their subs aside and ask them if they’re safe; if they’re being mistreated and need some sort of help. But there’s never enough evidence and chances are, they’d be too scared to say anything anyways. That particular handful of Dom(me)s that show up to Tony Stark’s parties – they know better. They’re calculated that way.

Their  _comments_ give them away – that holier-than-though air to them that makes Bucky’s blood boil – but their actions, at least in public, do not. Not enough to legally justify a confrontation over it. Besides, the one and only time one of the big wigs tried to smack around their sub against their will in Tony’s presence, he made such a scene that the media practically had a field day. His business associates would have to have shit for brains to try and pull a stunt like that again in public.

Still, it blows Bucky’s mind that people like them still exist in this day and age.  _It’s 2015_ , for fuck’s sake, and yet there are  _still_ Dom(me)s, few as they admittedly are in number, who were clearly raised with the old-school, traditionalist way of thinking: that subs are somehow  _beneath_ them. Like it doesn’t  _matter_ that there are laws in place protecting their rights – rights, by the way, that are exactly the same in every way, shape, and form as Dom(me)s and Switches have. It’s not the Stone Age anymore, and if Bucky’s thankful for nothing else about the society he lives in today, it’s that those assholes luckily don’t make up the majority. He only ever really seems to come into contact with them at events of the  _richer_ kind.

He reads the paper while munching on his breakfast. He can’t help but snort to himself while taking a sip of orange juice, when he sees an article about Tony on page four. He always seems to be in every single paper Bucky ever picks up.  _Somehow_ , it never fails, Bucky’s usually somewhere in the background of the picture, thanks to the paparazzi really only ever being able to snag photos at his public events. Bucky, as it were, is always at those events. Goes along with the territory of being an employee. He makes a mental note to jokingly tell Tony that  _they need to spend some time apart_ as he folds the paper closed and finishes the bite in his mouth.

At least it was a halfway flattering photo of himself this time. The last one caught him mid-yawn and got paired with the caption, ‘ _James Barnes struggling through another relapse? How will it affect his position at Stark Industries??_ ’

Christ, if he had a nickel for every time the goddamn media speculated that he had some sort of drug problem or sex addiction, he’d be able to  _buy out_ his friend and take over the business himself.

He peels off his black muscle shirt as he heads towards the bathroom, balling it up and tossing it aside to pick up later. After turning on the shower, he strips out of his sweatpants and slides the elastic from his hair, feeling it fall around his shoulders, wet and hot at the nape from perspiration. For the first few minutes, he lets the water pelt over his body and wash away the sweat, while he stares off and gets lost in though. Normally he doesn’t pay it any attention, but once in a while, he can’t help but think about the reputation that’s somehow built around him over the years.

Bucky’s a well-known face around the city, thanks to not just his association as a Stark Industries employee, but also as one of Tony’s closer friends. Tony’s  _always_ been a popular face in the public, for as long as Bucky’s known him; someone worth chatting about, even if that means making up stories about him in order to do so. Most of what’s said is bullshit, same as the lies that get spread about Bucky. If he could do it all over again, it’s not that he’d pick a  _different_ path, per se. He likes his life the way it is, and he knows he’s lucky to have it.

The gossip, he could just do without. And fuck, that seems to be never-ending sometimes.

It’s a strange phenomenon, the way people who don’t even know him assume they’ve got him pinned. Have figured out every intimate detail. Admittedly, he  _had_ played a hand in creating that original image, thanks to some of the stunts he  _did_ pull in his youth. But he’d  _just_ started working for Tony back then, he was immature and still discovering who he was, and it’d been hard not to get swept up in the glitz and the glam that came with his new-found lifestyle. He and Tony had both gotten up to some pretty crazy, stupid shit together back in the day. Bucky probably could’ve made some better choices.

But that doesn’t mean he’s the guy some of those rumors try to make him out to be.

 _James Barnes_ … One of New York’s most promising, sought-after bachelors.  _James Barnes_ , the Dom every sub on the Upper East Side wants. They assume that just because he has that infamous metal arm that he’s somehow some sort of ‘ultimate Dom’, for whatever fucking reason that makes them think that. Bucky doesn’t even  _want_ to know.

To be fair, he knows he can always go on record and set it straight. But ninety-nine percent of the time, Bucky couldn’t be bothered with giving any of those rumors the time of day. By addressing them, it’d only draw more attention to them and give off the guise that they’re  _worth_ talking about. Bucky’s never been one to indulge in gossip,  _or_  give their owners the power of thinking that they could make him care about their words.

Still… They peg him as playing ‘hard to get’, because he’s charming with men and women alike and isn’t shy about flirting in public, but  _doesn’t_  have a sub of his own. He’s  _never_ had a sub, more to the point, and maybe that’s why some people find him even more of a mystery. Sure, he’s sexually active – he’s twenty-six, for fuck’s sake, is that  _really_ a surprise? – but he’s not some sort of sleazy Dominant that jumps from sub to sub like they’re cattle in a lineup.

What the rumors  _never_ seem to address is how he  _always_ politely refuses the subs at those parties who  _do_ come onto him… The ones who’re also part of that elite, blue-blood-esque social circle, and just want a piece of Bucky because his face happens to be one that people recognize. They don’t give a fuck about him as a person, and they sure as hell give even  _less_ of a fuck about actually developing a legitimate relationship with him.

And that’s exactly why he’s nowhere near the person some of the rumors paint him out to be.  _If only they knew_. His friends know. The people who really know  _him_ as a person –  _Bucky_ , not  _James_ – could testify from here ‘til Sunday that it’s  _laughable_ that anyone would think for a second that Bucky is that kind of guy, let alone that sort of Dom. They know the motive behind Bucky’s actions; the real intent that drives him.

And it’s simple, really: Bucky doesn’t have a sub because he hasn’t found The One. It’s because he’s a complete and total romantic at heart. He enjoys love stories as much as he loves a good action-packed flick, because he’s a sucker for happy endings; a total believer in things like  _soulmates_  and  _love at first sight_ and  _forever_. The reason Bucky’s never had a sub is because he’s a  _normal fucking person_  with actual values, unlike some of the creeps he’s forced to rub elbows with for the sake of his job.

If not for the fact that his regular life outside of work and Tony’s parties is entirely  _ordinary_  and filled with  _regular_ sorts of people (ones without fancy things and wallets too fat to fit in their back pockets), Bucky might sometimes forget that he’s still part of the  _majority_  – the people who’ve never seen subs, Dom(me)s, and Switches as being anything less than equal, and the  _relationship_  shared between partners as nothing short of personal, sacred _._ Built on trust, respect, and a mutual understanding of give and take.

He’s not even presumptuous enough to  _own_ a collar. What’s the point if he doesn’t even have a partner? It’s not like he has a ‘one size fits all’ collecting dust on a shelf in his closet, and just any individual will do. Call him a sap, but he’s always fantasized that when the right person came along, the timing would be perfect, and  _if_ they wanted to wear his collar, it’d be one bought just for them. Meant for no one else – unique and special and  _one of a kind_ , like a fingerprint.

Bucky refuses to have a sub until he’s found his  _person_ , the other half to his heart.

And hell, if his soulmate  _never_ wanted a collar, that’d be just as fine by him. They passed that law back in ‘72 for a reason, after all – the one revoking a Dom(me)’s right to  _force_ a collar onto any unwilling individual, and making it an autonomous  _choice_ instead of a mandatory commitment. Bucky likes it better that way, as do most Dom(me)s nowadays. It’s only those select few who were raised with the old-school ways of thinking that still believe that collars should be a must, regardless of what their sub wants. Bucky’s glad there aren’t many of those punks living on the Brooklyn side – though he’s busted up his knuckles more than once the odd time he  _has_ crossed paths with the likes of those scum.

By today’s standards, though, it just makes the decision that much more special, if it happens… Means that the partner  _wants_ to willingly make that sort of commitment and give themselves to their Dom(me) on such an emotional, physical, and spiritual level, even though they by no means  _have_ to. And a Dom(me) considers themselves fucking  _grateful_ to be with a partner who trusts them that much. Any less appreciation for their sub, in Bucky’s mind, is just plain disrespectful.

He doesn’t realize that he’s been zoned out and let the hot water waste away until he feels it start to cool against his back. Grabbing his bottle of shampoo, he quickly washes his hair and then turns the shower off. Wrapping a towel around his waist and stepping out, he habitually turns his gaze up and finds himself staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror parallel to him. Bucky’s grey eyes drop down to look at the fine seam on his shoulder where the metal arm Tony had given him back in ‘08 connects to flesh, blood, and bone. Once again, he’s struck with confusion, wondering what the hell people think he  _does_ with that thing behind closed doors to make people pine after it so much and, subsequently, him.

 _Fuck if he knows._ Heading out of the bathroom, Bucky turns off the light behind him and thinks for the millionth time that if those snobs only knew the  _real_ Bucky Barnes, they’d discover his secret… That he’s not one of them. Never has been, never will be. He’s just a boy from Brooklyn, who grew up without much more than a couple cents to his name. Who sees the world for how it  _really_ is, with all its colors, and not just the black and white hues some of those folk still see it in.

They’d probably want nothing to do with him then.

Sometimes, Bucky thinks he’d be grateful for that.

* * *

Steve doesn’t give a shit what Sam thinks, that éclair was delicious. He almost wishes Sam was actually  _with_ him, just so he could shoot him a smug smile and noisily lick the crumbs from his fingers, smacking his lips loudly at the end of each fingertip to make his point. Instead, he settles on doing it  _quietly_ , while he browses through the playlist on his iPhone to find something else to put on. 

Just as he gets to his pinky, he realizes that he’s being scrutinized beneath another’s gaze. The tip of his smallest finger still between his lips, his baby blues slowly rise to see that the guy sitting across from him is in fact staring.  _Like a pervert_. Figures.  _This_ is exactly why Steve hates taking the damn bus, but he’s adamant about the fact that the cost of having a car in a place like New York is just ridiculous, given the traffic – even if he lives in a  _slightly_  less chaotic place like Brooklyn.

The guy looks like a total douchebag, too; probably  _wouldn’t_ come off that way under any other circumstance, but it’s all in that degrading smile and the suggestive glint in his eyes. It sucks to say, but it’s not like this sort of attention is  _new_ for Steve. That’s always just his luck, that  _decent_ people are never the ones striking up a nice conversation with him so that they can flirt and show some interest.

Normally, Steve wouldn’t mind that (even though he’s still human, and  _everyone_ likes feeling attractive once in a while). It’s the fact that it always solely seems to be one gross Dom after another who gives him the uncomfortable eye, or the unwanted catcall; seeing his size and his features and thinking,  _Mm, bet I could give it to that twink nice and rough._  

And for the record, it’s  _not_ Domphobic of Steve to always assume that these jerks  _are_ Doms by first glance. It’s that he  _knows_ their type – he’s seen it, he’s memorized  _that look._ He’s one of your typical closed-minded Dompremacists, who likewise guesses just by so much as giving him the once-over that Steve’s a sub, and thinks he can pull rank and try some fancy triggering crap  _that wouldn’t even work on him anyway_ to get Steve to swoon and sweetly ask to suck his cock.

 _Fucking gross._ Steve would sooner bite it off.

“Not on your life, pal,” Steve snaps, before the asswipe can open his stupid mouth and get a word in. He thinks he can hear the guy shoot something back like,  _Fuckin’ cocktease_ , while he gets up and moves to another seat closer to the driver – not for his  _own_ protection, but so that if buddy over there decides to keep trying, he at least has a witness to testify that Steve was within his rights to punch him in the jaw.

Evidently, that guy was all bark and no bite, because he doesn’t follow. Deciding on a song at last, Steve shoves his phone back into his pocket before noticing a copy of People Magazine that someone had forgotten on the vacant seat beside him. With a little huff, paired with a tiny smirk, Steve picks it up and reads the cover. He’s never been overly interested in that sort of popular culture, so when it comes to being caught up on who’s sleeping with who and all that irrelevant gossip, Steve’s knowledge on the matter rivals someone who’s been living under a rock for the past five years.

He  _certainly_  doesn’t care about who made the top 100 list for ‘Sexiest Switches’. But looking at the face on the cover, he’s still not overly surprised that Tony Stark ranked as number one this time around. He knows little about the man, other than the fact that his name seems to be plastered  _everywhere_ , and he’s one of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the State. Maybe even the country – who knows, Steve hardly pays attention.

Dropping the magazine back down without so much as bothering to open it up, he folds his hands in his lap and stares out the window, getting lost in watching the world pass him by. He wonders sometimes what it would be like growing up a Switch. He imagines it’s pretty much the same as being bisexual, like Steve. All it really means is that you’re capable of being turned on by more options. He supposes the sexual experiences open more doors that way.

Beyond that, though, Steve doesn’t really see the big deal. Some people seem to think that Switches are constantly  _livin’ la vida loca_ , when if anything, they tend to get the same sort of ridiculous grievances that bi and pansexuals get from ignorant people – the stereotype painted across their foreheads, like a bull’s-eye without merit:  _S-L-U-T._ Like the fact that you  _can_ be attracted to more than one option automatically means that you’re hopping into bed with anybody who so much as  _smiles_ at you the right way.

Which is obviously a big load of bull. It doesn’t matter if you’re hetero, queer, cis, trans, Dom(me), sub, Switch, or  _what_ -have-you –  _everyone_ is  _people_ , and some people like sex more than others. Steve can’t stand when certain members of society try to label that sort of thing as  _bad_ , or use it as an umbrella term as a standard for judgement. Take him for example: he’s not even the type of sub that gets off on the idea of being submissive to their Dom(me) twenty-four-seven, but he knows it’s not his right to judge others who  _do._ Because it’s  _their_ life, not his, and whatever makes them happy doesn’t harm him in any way.

Steve’s not a snob by any means, but he’s certainly a modernist. Sometimes, it’s not so much that he wishes that  _everyone_ thought the same way he thinks – it’s just that sometimes he  _does_.

If there didn’t exist narrow-minded, oppressive people in the world, it would be a much happier place. Steve knows it’s a childish wish that everyone could just get along but he still wishes for it regardless, even if it’s unrealistic. Sure, the number of Dompremacists, subpremacists, and the like continue to dwindle away with each passing day, thanks to the ever-growing mentality that’s been carving new paths in society and pushing out the old ones over the last half dozen decades. But they still  _exist_ , and no matter how hard society tries, they’ll never be able to change  _everyone’s_ thinking.

The world will always be full of dicks, is basically the point. Steve can’t think too hard about it sometimes or it drives him crazy.

Being a sub, though, he wonders with an innocent curiosity how it would feel to also be capable of getting stimulation from dominating another person. It’s a concept he can only objectively understand, since his brain isn’t wired that way. On its most basic level, he supposes it’s no different than the sort of satisfaction a sub feels when they relinquish control to a Dom(me), or follow orders and make a person happy, or receive praise for doing it well.

He’s just not entirely certain why a Dom(me) gets the pleasure they get from controlling another person. He’s had plenty of talks about it with Sam, and Peggy, and other close friends over the years who’re Dom(me)s or Switches, but he never fully feels like he understands. They’ve tried to explain to him that it’s not so much the  _control_ aspect of it, though that plays a small part.

Rather, it’s earning your sub’s trust and feeling that sense of pride, power, and adoration when you can  _see…_   _feel_ that your sub’s finally comfortable enough to give you that part of them and essentially, place their body and their safety in your hands. It’s the pleasure you get from knowing that your sub trusts you and only you to give them what they need; make them feel good – and knowing that  _they_ know you’d never hurt them or abuse their trust.

It’s a difficult concept for Steve to wrap his head around. One second, he feels like he finally might get it, because his friends are  _good_ people, and he knows that the majority of Doms nowadays are just like them and share the same mentality. For a moment in time, whenever he talks about this sort of thing with them, he thinks that maybe he  _is_ ready to open himself up to a new relationship –  _a new Dom(me)_ – again.

But then--

_(He remembers the way it had sounded when the Cracker of the whip snapped against his back, hard enough to split flesh. The way the noise it made cut into the air like it cut into him – loud enough to scare his heart into beating faster, but not loud enough to mask his scream. No matter how hard he cried, it didn’t stop. The gag forced between his teeth stopped him from being able to say the safety word, and no matter how much he wanted to beg for it to end, he remembers being told over and over, ‘This is what you need…’)_

No. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to understand. It doesn’t matter if the world is filled with people who don’t think that way anymore, there are still the ones out there who  _do_ …

And from Steve’s experience, he’s never taking that chance again. The consequences – as he learned the hard way – are never worth the risk.

* * *

Shortly before his lunch break – which should hardly be  _called_ a ‘lunch break’ since it’s damn well near dinner time by now – Bucky’s in the middle of typing data into the system’s mainframe when he hears footsteps, and then feels someone’s chin press down and rest on his shoulder. Bucky doesn’t blink or stop typing, still focused on remembering the current paragraph of the report he’s in the middle of transcribing – word for word – from its hard copy to the database. But he  _does_ still mutter, “ _No_.” 

“C’mon buttercup, I didn’t even  _say_ anything yet,” Tony pouts with mock insult, watching the words as they appear on the large screen in front of them.

“You want me to run out and grab you some Gai Yang grilled chicken from Ngam,” Bucky replies, voice on autopilot while he’s still in the zone. “Even though you  _clearly_ have good vision – not just  _one_ eye, but  _two_ of ‘em even – and can see that I’m in the middle of workin’.”

“Uh, I know, I’m sort of the Santa Claus of the company – y’know, the one who brings you tidings of good joy and  _pays_ you?” Stark quips.

“Answer’s still no.”

“But I’m  _hungry_ ,” Tony says, purposely whining.

“Then go get it yourself; I ain’t your runner boy,” Bucky replies.

“Yeah but I have to be here in case Reed Richards calls. I told you that he left Von Doom Industries, remember? So he’s switched to the  _good_ side and been staying over in Tokyo right now to do some research into the wave-particle duality in the use of gamma radiation over at--”

“Yep, and just like every time you get into this, you’ve once again stopped speakin’ English,” Bucky interjects impatiently, fingers still clicking away on the keys at a fast pace.

“Okay, well, it basically means--”

“That was  _not_ an invitation to try explainin’ it to me.”

“Then get this, if nothing else: I can’t leave. Otherwise I would. But he could call at any moment.”

Bucky makes a quiet, frustrated sound when he stumbles over some of the data in his head. After his accident in ‘08, he’d developed a bit of an obsessive-compulsive tendency when it came to his memory. Simply put, he fucking  _hates_ forgetting things. Closing his eyes, he focuses and mentally pulls up one of the tricks they’d taught him in physio all those years ago. It relieves him when he’s able to recall it back within seconds.

Letting out a calming breath, he goes back to typing. “Isn’t Japan, like, twelve hours ahead or us or somethin’?”

“Fourteen in Tokyo, actually. But Richards is like me, he basically never sleeps. Thinks best at night.  _So_ , Ngam?”

“Dude, I’ve been at this since  _ten_.”

“So? I’m your boss. If I say you can take a break, you can take a break.”

“Well,  _boss_ , not everyone gets to sleep in ‘till one and waltz on in whenever they feel like it,” Bucky replies, his tone lacking any real sort of venom. He’s just  _very_ used to Tony wanting to come hang out rather than let him work whenever the billionaire has some spare time on his hands.

“Today it was more of a  _moonwalk_ , actually--”

“My point is, I have a deadline, remember?” Bucky finally finishes the last sentence of the paragraph he’d been working through. His brain no longer recalling that information, he figures he can give it a  _few_ minutes’ rest before continuing on. So he leans back in his chair with a heavy exhale, letting his hands fall into his lap. Tony still hasn’t moved his chin from his shoulder. Bucky quirks an amused eyebrow and turns his face to look at him.

Tony’s bottom lip is jutted out, giving his best puppy dog impression. “Hey there, muffin,” he jokes. Bucky answers by flicking him in the forehead with his flesh hand, making Tony back off with a  _barely_  injured little, “Oww!”

Bucky smiles tiredly. “Seriously, man, I’m swamped. If you want S.H.I.E.L.D.’s complete files in the system by Friday, then--”

“Make it Monday,” Tony cuts in, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture. “In fact, make it  _two_ Mondays from now. I like rustling up Fury’s skirt.  _Anyways_ ,” he says quickly, leaning against a vacant spot on Bucky’s desk and crossing his arms, “I’m bored, I’m hungry--”

“You  _just_ got here!” Bucky exclaims. “Do you never eat unless you’re at work? Ever heard of lunch, per chance?”

“--And I got a pre-released, virgin copy of  _Mortal Kombat X_ that we could boot up in my office on the PS4,” Tony continues, like he hasn’t heard him. “But more importantly, I could starve to death if not given proper nourishment in time. Seriously, Barnes, I’m shocked that you’re not more concerned about my poor health. It’s heartbreaking, I’m heartbroken. You’re now a murderer, I hope you’re happy.”

“Yeah, you  _need_ a heart in order for it to break, smartass,” Bucky shoots back, not missing a beat.

They both know he’s kidding. Back and forth bantering like this is their thing, always has been. And Bucky would be one of the first people to argue that Tony Stark has a heart. If the constant years of support as Bucky’s friend wasn’t enough proof, then all anyone needs to do is see the way Tony looks at his Domme and best friend, Pepper.

She’d been the one to make Tony realize he no longer wanted a life of unfulfilling sex with one-night stands whose faces he’d never see again. With her, he was  _finally_ ready to settle down and live a more domesticated life. It can still put a smile on Bucky’s face when he remembers the look on Tony’s, the first day he’d strutted into the building adorning his collar. He’d never looked so happy.

Tony threads his fingers into a praying gesture. Lifting his hands beneath his chin and sticking out his bottom lip again, he asks, “Pretty please, Barnes –  _Bucky_? Bucky Bear? My precious little Buckaroo? Take care of little old me and get me some nourishment before I wither into a prune and die, and then you’re held solely responsible?” Jutting out his bottom lip more, he bats his eyelashes and sucks up even more, saying, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope?”

Bucky narrows his eyes at him, but smirks. “A virgin copy, huh?” he asks.

His friend smirks back, knowing he’s got Bucky hook, line, and sinker. “Never been played,” he answers affirmatively. “Won’t even be released for another couple weeks. You can help me pop its cherry.”

After holding Tony’s gaze for a few silent seconds, Bucky sighs and rolls his eyes. Shaking his head, one corner of his mouth still turned up, he mutters, “I fuckin’ hate you,” and rises out of his seat. Outstretching his hand, he opens his palm and then curls his fingers a few times. Grinning triumphantly, Tony pulls out a couple twenties and slaps them into Bucky’s hand.

“You’re the best Dom in the world,” Tony sweetly jokes, laying it on thick.

Bucky holds the money up as he turns and starts to head towards the door. “I’ll make sure to let Pepper know you said that if I run into her on my way out,” he mock threatens.

“Hey, get yourself a little something nice with that money, muffin!” he hears Tony call out after him. They both know full well that he intends to feed Bucky, too, while they waste a couple hours playing video games in his office; holed up like teenagers, and  _not_ adults who have actual  _responsibilities_. “A dumpling or two is acceptable!”

Bucky doesn’t bother looking back; just lifts his metal hand and flips him the finger. “You’re a dick!” he cheerily calls back.

“And I love you, too!”

* * *

Steve’s calling Peggy pretty much the  _moment_ he’s leaving work. 

“Hey, are you busy right now?” he asks, trying to keep from sounding as irritable and impatient as he feels.

“Only with a Netflix marathon of  _The Escape Artist_ ,” she answers, always the pinnacle of calm – and right now, exactly what Steve needs. “Why?”

“That the one with David Tennant?” Steve asks, walking to the nearest bus top at a brisk pace.

“The one and only.”

“Cool, do you mind if I maybe drop by for a bit?” He always feels a little guilty when he goes to her all tensed and wound-up, but he figures it’s a  _compliment_ that he trusts her more than anyone to turn to when he’s like this. She never seems to mind, and always dismisses his apologies whenever he first shows up. Looking across the street to one of the convenience stores, he adds, “I can bring chocolate?”

“Don’t worry about it, you know it’s alright. I’ll put the kettle on,” she replies. They have their little routines together when things like this happen. Albeit, they don’t happen  _often_ , but Peggy’s been his friend since the fourth grade. When it comes to the little ways she knows she can help, she does them without needing to be asked. It’s one of the many reasons Steve’s so damn grateful to have her in his life.

Knowing that Peggy’s going to have a cup of tea waiting for him when he gets there, like she always does when he needs it, helps loosen the tightness in his chest just a sliver. He’s basically had the day from hell – just one rude customer after another – and normally he’s good at taking it with a stiff smile and bearing his annoyance in silence.

Today’s just not one of those days.

He’s at her place about forty minutes later, and sure enough, she opens the door with a cup of Earl Grey already in hand. Steve gives her a self-deprecating smile and takes it with a quiet, “Thank you, Peg,” as he steps inside.

Immediately, Peggy’s doing what Peggy does best and cutting right to the chase: “So, tell me what happened.”

Steve does. He removes his shoes, puts his backpack near the door, and then follows her into the living room, all the while going on a rant and venting about his shitty day. He chooses to start with the run-in with the creep on the bus, and  _not_ about the incident of him waking up with an unwanted hard-on. Once at work itself, it seemed like  _every_ other customer woke up that day and thought to themselves, ‘ _Hey, I know what’ll be fun: let’s be a dick to our barista for no reason. Maybe bark orders at him to try and make him go faster._ ’

“Like because they figured I must be a fuckin’ sub, that’d make me  _wanna_ make their coffees quicker or something,” he fumes.

Okay, to be fair, not  _all_ of them were rude to him  _because_ of the assumption that he’s a sub. Not even half of them. Mostly, they were assholes simply because, as people, they were being an asshole. But the  _odd few_ who did try to use their self-righteous sense of entitlement to boss him around (one guy in particular who even went as far to snap his fingers at Steve repeatedly and call him “subby”)? They’re the ones who got to him the most; succeeded in riling him up this bad.

Peggy, of course, is appalled at what she’s hearing. “Did he really call you ‘subby’?” she asks, taking her seat back on the couch and pulling one of the pillows onto her lap. It’s rare in this day and age that people use subphobic slurs like that anymore but of course, once in a blue moon you still get the occasional bigot.

“Yep,” Steve mutters. She pats the pillow welcomingly, because right now, she knows what her friend needs – and that Steve’s far too proud to  _ask_ for it. With her, he goes easily: lying down on his side (facing the TV) and resting his head on her lap.

“And what did Abraham do?”

He feels Peggy calmly slip her fingers into his hair and begin to lightly drag them across his scalp, through the strands. His eyes close as a shiver dances up his spine, then back down again, making his skin pebble at the surface with goosebumps. His brain instinctually begins to send him some much needed endorphins. It’s been so long since Steve’s let his friend do this to him that he can practically  _feel_ them slowly washing along his body, chipping away more and more at the stressed-induced knot in his stomach and gradually relaxing him.

“Abe?” he answers, voice admittedly a little breathier now. “Same as he does any time we have a rude customer who crosses a line: he kicked them to the curb.”

“… _But?_ ”

“But what?”

He can hear the amused smirk in Peggy’s voice when she clarifies, “I know you, Steve, and I hardly believe that you let him take care of things  _for_ you – at least not at first. So how much trouble did you get yourself into  _this_ time?”

Steve snorts, eyes still closed.  _Yeah_ , Peggy knows him too well. Sam would’ve asked the same thing, too. Steve sort of has a habit of not taking people’s bullshit, even if he’s on the clock. Even though it’s not very professional and  _certainly_ not all that mature of him, there’ve been more than a few times where Steve’s been bullied or seen one of his coworkers  _being_ bullied by a customer, only to step in and basically get into a contest to see which one of them can yell louder. If the customer is a special breed of asshole, sometimes Steve purposely messes up their order or takes especially long to get it done.

Once – the one and only time someone thought it was okay to reach  _across_ the counter and grab his wrist to yank him  _back_ over, because they’d insisted they wanted an  _Iced_ Vanilla Latte and not just a Vanilla Latte(for the record, they’d never said ‘ _Iced_ ’) like the one he’d given them – Steve’s automatic reaction was to smack their cup up and spill the hot contents all over their shirt while his ripped his wrist free.

But again, that’d only been a one-time thing.

Steve hums to himself, smiling when Peggy tucks some of his hair behind his ear. “Same thing as what he always does,” he answers, “he pulled me aside and told me that he understood why I handled things the way I did, but that we have policies for a reason, and he’s there to make sure his employees stay safe. Basically, just to let him take care of it in the future.”

“And how many times has he had this talk with you since you’ve worked there?” she asks out of curiosity.

“Mm… I dunno, six? Seven? I know, I know, I’ll try harder to be good,” he mumbles.

“You  _are_  good,” she assures him, and Steve sighs with content at the subtle – and meticulously injected – praise. This is why he trusts Peggy with these things, whenever he has to say  _enough_ and just needs a little help to take the edge off. She understands why it helps, and never reads too deeply into his reactions. He doesn’t feel ashamed of accepting this sort of care from her, nor does he let himself get overly embarrassed if the serotonin and other chemical releases make him flush or get him hard for the time that it’s happening.

Like with Sam, what he shares with Peggy is purely platonic. They’re so close and able to share so much  _because_ they both know it. Steve’s body may grow aroused, but it’s purely a biological reaction and nothing more. It’s not the  _sexual_ stimulation Steve looks for in these moments with Peggy, but the simple pleasure that floods his chest at feeling  _safe_ and  _secure_ – that temporary, partial  _numbness_ to his thoughts, where they can come to a halt for a short time and, for a few minutes at least, Steve can just float.

And he knows Peggy gets pleasure from it, too, in the exact same way and for the exact same reasons as him. So really, it’s a win-win for them both.

“You’re a good boy,” she repeats unassumingly, “and you have a good heart. Which is why you stand up against injustice whenever you see it. It’s why Abraham overlooks it every time and doesn’t let you go.”

It’s true – maybe it’s because Abe is also a sub and grew up during a time when they were actually treated a little  _worse_ than the people in Steve’s generation are (which is leaps and bounds greater; honestly, the odd Dompremacist here and there is substantially better than back in the days where that sort of unacceptable behavior was considered the  _norm_  – and Steve can’t even fathom the idea of that).

Maybe it’s because he’s always rooted for the ‘little guys’ of the world. Either way, he’s a kind man who calls him ‘Steven’ ( _he likes that… Reminds him of his ma…_ ) and has a heart larger than anyone Steve’s ever met before. So… Really, he probably  _should_ follow the rules a little more at work, if only to show Abe the respect he deserves.

As if reading his mind, Peggy adds as an afterthought, “Just don’t keep taking advantage of that.”

Steve nods. “I won’t,” he agrees softly.

“Are you starting to feel better, darling?” she asks, that edge of protectiveness incapable of being hidden from her voice. It’s like a blanket wrapping Steve up and making him feel pleasantly warm.

“Yeah, thank you.” Opening his eyes, he takes a deep breath and then releases it. “You can stop whenever you want to,” he offers.

Instead, she chooses to continue playing with his hair absentmindedly while she presses play, and  _The Escape Artist_ resumes on the television screen. Steve’s more than alright with staying where he is, and for a few calming hours, they fall into silence and watch; Peggy petting Steve’s hair while his right hand hangs down by the floor and lightly has its fingers wrapped around her ankle. That’s a thing that  _Peggy_ likes, and he feels good knowing he can give that back to her during these sorts of times.

Later that night, while lying in bed – trying and  _failing_  to fall asleep; thank god his shift doesn’t start until twelve-thirty tomorrow – Steve’s mind wanders, and he finds himself thinking about things he hasn’t really thought about in years. He stares ahead, technically looking at the wall but  _seeing_ nothing, as memories from his childhood run through a loop in his mind. Mostly, he just remembers the way it felt to hold his ma’s hand, back during the years where he still needed to reach above his shoulders to do it… The way she was always warm, as if ready to actually  _be_  his blanket whenever Steve needed her. He remembers the way every room lit up the second she smiled.

There are lots of memories that take place inside of hospitals – whether due to Sarah or because of himself – but he has a tendency to skip over those. Mostly, he just tries to scrounge up the memory of what it felt like to be  _innocent_ ; not have responsibilities, or worries beyond getting your homework done, when your favorite cartoon was on, or finishing dinner as quickly as possible so you could run outside and keep playing.

As an adult, he wishes more often than he’ll admit that he could go back to a time when the most conflicting choice he had to make was whether  _Pokemon_ was better than  _Digimon_ … Did he want to go on the  _swings_ , or was he feeling the  _slide_ more right now… Draw the  _red_ Power Ranger or the  _pink_ one… Sometimes, things would feel easier if he could be that wide-eyed, hopeful kid again who only saw the world for its beauty, and still naively believed that  _goodness_ was something inherent, rather than a rarity.

Steven Grant Rogers had once been a boy who believed in humanity, and Steve often wishes that humanity hadn’t gone and let that poor little boy down.

As kids, everyone gets at least a nice, solid decade of freedom before things like  _labels_ and  _judgments_ start to touch you. Until puberty, no one really cares about their sexuality enough to feel the need to have to define it, and society doesn’t put that same sort of pressure on children.  _Freedom_. Until puberty, your body’s not even developed enough yet to determine whether your Nature Identity is going to be a Dom, a sub, or a Switch. Those parts of your brain don’t mature and activate until puberty anyways, so there’s no such thing as  _triggers_ or  _differences_ or  _I’m this and you’re that_ …

_Freedom._

Not that coming into that part of yourself isn’t rewarding in its own right. But even in their youth, most children don’t give a shit about those sorts of things until they’re a little older anyways. All the same, most parents (who can afford it) get the testing done within the first year of puberty. It’s been that way for so long that it’s sort of unofficially become a rite of passage for adolescents. Even  _he’d_ been a little excited – despite  _mostly_ being nervous as hell – back then, when he found out that he’d be able to find out for sure, too.

If he was just a couple years older, he probably would’ve refused and just let time do its thing, nature take its course… Testing is by no means mandatory –  _hasn’t been since ’49_  – and it’s not like  _without_ it, a person suddenly doesn’t know how to function.

All it really amounts to is them having to figure it out on their own, when they start discovering their triggers out in the real world. For most parents, testing is simply seen as being easier; a way to take the stress of  _not knowing_ off of their children, so they can know who they are a bit better and  _why_ they’ll start to feel the way they feel, and react to the things they react to.

Steve remembers waiting and waiting for puberty to come, but  _if_ it tried to hit him on time, it swung and it missed. Logically, he’d known that puberty usually happens for boys anywhere from the ages of twelve to sixteen. Yet he hadn’t actually known any boys in his school that needed to take that long. Sure enough, his sixteenth birthday had come and passed and Steve was  _certain_ his balls were basically never going to drop.

Eventually, he just sort of stopped caring or waiting for it to happen. He’d been thirteen when he figured out that he liked boys the same way he liked girls, so it wasn’t like puberty was going to change  _that_. Really, the only things he anticipated coming out of it was figuring out his Nature Identity and  _hopefully_ having a long overdue growth spurt.

Well, within a few months, puberty came but that growth spurt, sadly, did not. Luckily he  _was_ able to finally add a tiny bit of body weight to his frame by the time graduation came around. His doctors were always growing more and more concerned with each passing year, about the fact that his superpower always seemed to have been the inability to break a full hundred pounds. But even then, it really hadn’t been enough of a weight gain to write home about. Other than that, the most he walked away from puberty with were some pimples that eventually faded away, and his voice dropping what felt like five whole octaves.

When Sarah surprised Steve by telling him that she’d been putting a little aside every month since his sixth birthday – had all the money saved up in full for quite a few years, actually – his jaw had dropped to say the least. At first, he insisted that he was fine,  _S’ok ma, I really don’t need it, promise_ , but she’d have none of that,  _especially_ after working so hard to make it happen.

Maybe it was because she saw how much Steve had struggled growing up, namely in the first half dozen years of his life, just to  _survive_. That was one thing she could help make a little easier on him. It didn’t take long for Steve to see what this gesture meant to his mother, so with a little smile and a hug, he’d relented – far easier than he would have now – and thanked her.

Looking back on it, Steve remembers going into it not really  _knowing_ what to expect in terms of the outcome. Everyone already just sort of assumed that he would turn out to be a sub, thanks to his size. Peggy, Sam, and the gang were the only ones who honestly thought that Steve could go and surprise everyone by turning out to be a Dom, or maybe a Switch. They all assured him that there was nothing wrong with being a sub, and Steve didn’t need that sort of reassurance anyways.

It’s not like he saw that possibility as a  _bad_ thing. Lots of notable and famous people in the world are subs, and were even back then, too. Like with Doms and Switches, they’ve always come in different shapes, colors, and sizes. (Sometimes, in the people you’d least suspect. Steve remembers everyone  _freaking_ out the day that Arnold Schwarzenegger went on record and publicly announced to the world that he was, in fact, a submissive.) Honestly, it was mostly that Steve’s reservations came from literally  _not having a clue_ what to expect.

In reality, it’s not like the process cost them  _thousands_ of dollars or anything. But the whole thing still requires a neurologist, so unless you have really phenomenal health coverage (so basically, if you’re part of the rich minority), you’re guaranteed to be covering at least a portion of it from your own wallet. The testing itself turned out to be a walk in the park. Steve was worried that they’d have to take samples of his blood, and though he puts on a brave face and hides his fear, growing up a deathly sick kid meant that he got poked and prodded and stuck with needles all the time. Thanks to that, he hates even so much as the  _sight_ of them now.

It wasn’t nearly so intrusive. He’d basically been sat down in front of a screen, which would display a series of images and sounds for him. Specialized electrodes were stuck around his forehead, temples, and chest. An additional monitor had been set up next to him to keep track of his pulse. A small camera on the top of the screen in front of him would be recording the visible changes in Steve’s demeanor – most notably, dilation of the pupils, change in color across his cheeks or neck, or an increase or decrease in his respiratory patterns.

After that, all he had to do was sit,  _watch_ , and  _listen_. They showed him examples of different types of stimuli – none explicitly sexual or inappropriate, since the testing  _is_ predominantly done on preteens and teenagers, after all – to see which ones evoke responses from certain areas of the brain and, likewise, a physical response. In terms of audio, some examples would be someone reading a line of text in an authoritative or disciplinary tone; in others, meeker and obedient. Visually, Steve remembers an image of someone prostrating, and another from the perspective of looking  _up_ at an individual who was looking back down.

Simply put, if your brain lights up in  _some_ areas, paired with the appropriate increase in heart rate, body temperature, and a dilation of the pupils, you’re a Dom. If it lights up and responds in others, you’re a sub. If you experience an automated and involuntary reaction to  _both_ types of stimuli – as opposed to one over the other – you’re a Switch.

Steve obviously turned out to be a sub. It’d been surprising for him, because even though a part of him had already anticipated that, he’d never really given much thought for how certain things would have that sort of effect on him. He didn’t know what that would feel like, or how it would be. Seeing the carefully orchestrated visuals and hearing the select audio clips unlocked certain parts of his mind and body that he never even knew existed. He’d gone in there not knowing what to expect. He walked out feeling like a different person, with an entirely new outlook on who he was and what he wanted.

The truth is, he hadn’t always been like the way he is now. Back then, it’d felt like a brand new world for Steve. Truthfully, he’d spent a  _lot_ of nights after that stashed away in his bedroom, watching videos and listening to recordings of Doms with their subs that got his head spinning and his heart racing. He’d watched a  _lot_ of porn; seemed to be getting hard practically all the time, and jerking off whenever he had a moment of privacy. The idea of finding a Dom to share that with one day excited him. The more he researched and the more he learned – even in school, in the mandatory health classes (‘SSC’, he remembers them being called, for  _Safe, Sane, and Consensual_ ) that served to teach the students about healthy etiquette and relationships – the more excited he became.

Maybe that had been why he’d jumped into something way too easily. He hadn’t taken the proper precautions… He’d been too trusting. Steve still naively believed in  _people_ back then; made the mistake of thinking that everyone’s intentions were good, like some sort of fairy tale. What he’d forgotten was that even fairy tales have their monsters.

_(‘Shhh… Don’t cry. You know I’m only doing this because I know what’s best for you…’)_

All it’d taken was one person to hold Steve’s world in their hands and then crush it right in front of him. A year and a half of thinking that what was happening to him was  _normal_ ,  _healthy_ … That  _that_ was the way things worked, no matter how badly it hurt. He remembers not realizing until he finally got the guts to get out of it that what they’d been doing to him had actually been nothing more than pure, unmotivated abuse.

Steve shut that part of himself down after that. He’s been ignoring it, for the most part, ever since. All he knew was that he’d been degraded, and he’d been torn to shreds, and now he’d  _never_ let someone have his body  _and his heart_ like that again. Knowing that there are more people in the world than not who would never do a thing like that changes nothing in terms of how he  _feels_. And how he feels is that the only hands that are guaranteed to keep him safe are his own.

 _Maybe_ Steve Rogers is cynical, and  _maybe_ he has a hard time letting go. But one thing the world never prepared him for was what it would feel like to be stripped of who you are and be unmade. In that respect, he can hardly be blamed for feeling, even just a little, like the world had failed him.

* * *

Bucky’s thankful that Tony gave him the additional time to get all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files entered into the database. It’s meant that, over the course of the two weeks that follow, he’s able to breathe a little easier. It also typically means that he has more leeway to not have his work hindered by his boss showing up unexpectedly and coaxing him into more rounds of  _Mortal Kombat_. Which Tony does. Frequently. 

He gets everything done by the new deadline –  _two_ Mondays from his original one, just like Tony said – and then even gets the next day off so he can have some recovery time and rest his brain before starting on a new set of files on Wednesday. He’s not at all looking forward to diving into  _those_ ones. HYDRA is currently Stark Industries’ closest companion company in terms of  _business_ purposes, but in terms of  _management_ , no one gets along. Any association Bucky’s forced to have with them is only done because it’s his professional obligation.

Their CEO – a complete  _tool_ by the name of Alexander Pierce – is a perfect example of one of those old-school Doms who thinks it’s still okay to treat their subs like shit. It’d actually been one of his employees in upper management that’d backhanded her sub against their will at Stark’s party three years ago. That woman had never been allowed back onto Stark’s premises, but unfortunately, Pierce still frequents a lot of the high-scale shindigs. He and Tony have one of those  _We’d personally destroy each other if not for the fact that your company helps make mine money_ sort of relationships.

Personally, every time Bucky sees him, he wishes he could get away with decking the guy between the eyes without getting charged for it. Hell, he’d even make an exception for Pierce and use his  _metal_  hand.

Since he now has Tuesday off, he goes out with some friends – the ones who  _aren’t_ through work; the ones who know him best – and gets nice and slammed. He gets hit on, as he usually does, and does his fair share of flirting as well. The next morning, he wakes up with only a minor headache (Bucky’s always been nearly invincible when it comes to hangovers) and two people in bed with him.

He remembers falling asleep on his back, with Gwen comfortably on his right and Scotty on his left. Given that they’d all passed out with Bucky’s arms around  _both_ of them and he wakes up still in that exact same position, seems safe to say they all slept like the dead enough to not even bother moving.

It’d been a fun night. They’d all been pretty drunk, but Bucky made sure they all sobered up enough by the time the three of them crashed back into his apartment, giggling like a bunch of idiots, so that any fooling around would still be able to happen in a consensual state of mind. Bucky may not have a sub, but he still likes to dip his toes into the water and let loose from time to time. Gwen and Scott had been out with their friends, but then opted to spend most of the night chatting up Bucky. Apparently, somewhere along the way they’d silently decided that if a threeway could come out of it, they’d be willing to go at it together.

Gwen made it known that she’s a sub, and kept whispering into his ear about all the things she wanted Bucky to do to her. It’d been so tempting that Bucky had to close his eyes, lick his lips, and pull her in for a kiss to cut her off, while Scott was busy licking a pathway down to his cock. Scotty’s apparently a Switch, if the way he could easily transition from  _taking_ it to  _giving_ left nothing else to go by.

There was a lot of cursing and lot of sweat and there’s no two ways about it – Bucky needs to clean his bedding. They made an absolute  _mess_  of his bedroom and stayed up until nearly five a.m., alternating between Bucky dominating both of them at the same time, to Gwen being the only priority at his  _and_  Scotty’s hands.

Bucky’s very particular about how he is with one-night stands (which they all knew and understood this would be). There are certain things he’s comfortable with and an even longer list of things he isn’t. Ironically, it’s in the  _no strings attached_ scenarios where Bucky has a lot more limits – precisely because there are so many more things he just doesn’t  _want_ to do with people he has no emotional connection with. It’s the way he’s always felt.

So, he can get rough with a person, and he can slip certain things in there, like spanking or hair-pulling; scratching or biting. He can steel his tone and tell them what he wants, or husk such filthy things in their ear that they could – and sometimes  _do_ – come completely untouched. But to him, there’s not really much of a difference between him doing any of those things, and  _rough, slightly kinky_ sex.

Bucky doesn’t necessarily see it as him  _Domming_  them; if they happen to be a sub and happen to let themselves be triggered by it to make their orgasm even better, that’s just coincidental. And really though, if that’s the way they want to look at it and it helps them get their rocks off, that’s fine. Bucky  _does_ get pleasure in knowing he’s making the other person feel good, even if they may never see each other again once they part ways.

But ultimately, he holds back. He gives into it enough that, sexually, he can slate that fire burning away in the pit of his stomach and get some release – the deeper kind, the one rooted to his very core. Letting himself be a little triggered and giving into even a  _part_ of his Dominant needs is like a soothing balm if he’s stressed or tensed up. And the fact is, he loves sex. So he doesn’t let the rumors or the gossip or all that bullshit deter him from getting out there from time to time and enjoying the pleasures life has to offer.

He simply does it to a certain degree, and not a degree  _more_. The rest of it – the rest of  _him_ – should only be given to the person who wants to share something deeper with Bucky, as he would with them. Whenever he finally has a partner, a sub… He wants that person and only that person to have  _every_ part of him.

Carefully shuffling out from between them, trying not to wake his sleeping guests, Bucky heads onto his balcony for a cigarette before brushing his teeth and grabbing a quick shower. It’s almost a quarter to two, and even though it’s his day off, Bucky still has some errands he needs to run. Stopping by the fridge to see if he has anything to make breakfast reminds him that he’s in desperate need of groceries.

His instincts kick in just the tiniest bit when he heads back into his room to get changed and sees Gwen and Scott already awake, now cuddled up and murmuring sleepily amongst themselves. Able to read their body language by the way they smile and say good morning to Bucky, he goes over to them and takes a moment to first kiss Scott on the forehead, and then Gwen, returning their greeting. The simple gesture seems to placate them and deepen their smiles, which likewise triggers that sense of pride in Bucky’s chest. One-night stands are always so much nicer when there doesn’t have to be any residual awkwardness the next morning, and he’s glad he was able to make them feel taken care of.

He throws on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt while the three of them casually chit-chat. Combing his fingers through his hair quickly, he throws it up into an elastic and then offers to make all of them breakfast with whatever he has lying around. After a quick bite to eat, Gwen and Scott gather their things and thank Bucky for the fun evening before heading out together.

Bucky, ever the romantic, can’t help but wonder as he watches them leave if maybe Gwen and Scott will wind up together down the road. They especially seemed to have quite the spark between them the night before; one that seemed to surprise them both, like they’d never even realized it until that moment. Smiling to himself, Bucky shuts the door and goes to make a list of everything he has to do today – musing all the while about how funny life can be sometimes.

 

\---

 

The next couple hours is spent driving around town and ticking off his list of errands, leaving food duty for last, so the milk won’t spoil or he opens his trunk to find melted ice cream congealed to the fabric,  _again_. He’s got the window rolled down and his music playing. Bucky taps his hands rhythmically off the steering wheel and sings along with the lyrics, completely lost in his jam session. Despite the small chill in the air, the sun is out and the sky is clear. Overall, Bucky thinks that today’s a good day _._

He pulls up to an intersection and slows down until he’s at a standstill. Flicking on his right signal, he spares the hastiest glance in that direction, but then he’s solely looking  _left_  to where the oncoming traffic is still whizzing by. “C’mon,” he mutters to himself, slightly annoyed that there doesn’t seem to be a break between cars long enough to let Bucky in and turn. After what feels like whole minutes – but is only a few seconds, tops – he sees an opening and starts pressing onto the gas to sneak his way in--

And almost fucking runsover the pedestrian literally  _just_ stepping out onto the crosswalk. Bucky’s eyes fly wide and he shouts, “Shit!” as he slams on the breaks, heartrate instantly spiking and going a mile a minute. Thankfully, he doesn’t hit them, but he’d come pretty fucking close.  _Holy shit_ …  _Holy fuck…_ He’s never been in a car accident in his life. He’s certainly never almost fucking run over someone before.  _Fucking shit and fuck, that’d been close._  Despite not being the one on the receiving end of the vehicle,  _his_ life feels like it flashes before his eyes, realizing that it just as easily would’ve been over in a moment  _flat_ if he’d lagged in looking forward for even another split second.

It all happens really quickly. The guy in front of his car is obviously pissed, and he looks it. As soon as Bucky screeches to a stop, fists are crashing down onto his hood. Because his window is halfway down, Bucky can hear the words, “JESUS! YOU EVEN  _LOOK_ WHERE YOU WERE GOIN’, JERK!?”

Except Bucky’s not exactly paying attention anymore. In fact, he’s pretty much just gone and forgotten about the entire incident altogether. His mouth is slightly hung open and his eyes are wide, and he’s completely fucking  _gaping_ like a total jackass. As if a switch has been flipped, Bucky’s robbed of all words, and all thought, and all breath. Just like that – on this day, in his front seat, at the corner of President and Smith – everything changes.

Because this guy is… without a doubt the most  _beautiful_ thing Bucky’s ever seen.

He’s short and fascinatingly slender, wearing – from what Bucky can see – a pair of black jeans, along with a blue and red striped shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. His hair is dirty blond and, in Bucky’s opinion, meant to have fingers tangling into it. It strikes Bucky ever so slightly as ‘I read thick books and drink free-trade coffee’.  _That’s_  hair that deserves to be played with, regardless of what his Nature Identity is. Even hiding behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses, Bucky can see big, round eyes ( _currently indignant and glaring daggers at him_ ) that remind him of the color of the sky. Bucky’s never seen eyes quite like these, and he can’t even put his finger on what it is about them that leaves him feeling so transfixed.

There’re no words to describe it. He gets surrounded by ‘beautiful people’ constantly, especially given his social status, but this… this is so different. Those people can’t even hold a candle to this guy. It’s ridiculous, of course, because Bucky doesn’t even know him. And then there’s the obvious issue that he almost just went and reamed the guy with his car.  _And_ the fact that that adds up to just about the worst first impression imaginable.

None of that changes a thing, though… It’s love at first sight, even if Bucky doesn’t realize it yet himself.

Also, evidently,  _not_  a reciprocated feeling in the least. Bucky can’t really  _blame_  him for the way he’s practically snarling at Bucky right now. He’d been slinging a backpack off his left shoulder, but in the process of slamming his fists onto the hood of Bucky’s car, it’d slipped. The guy grabs the strap in the nick of time and readjusts, tensely shoving it back onto his shoulder before throwing his hands into the air and shouting, “Watch where you’re going!”

The whole thing really only starts and finishes within a few seconds or so. Still muttering to himself, the guy shakes his head and turns, stomping off and crossing the street, luckily without any other idiots like Bucky almost hitting him. Bucky watches him go and then quickly blinks out of his daze.  _God, he’s such an ass._ He should’ve been paying attention; there’s no justifying almost hitting someone. It’s not a coincidence that he reaches out and turns off his music altogether, as if that would make up for it somehow.

Bucky, in all good conscience, can’t just drive off without giving him an apology. The light turns green, and he impatiently waits for the lane next to him to have an opening so he can quickly change courses and take a  _left_ at the intersection, as opposed to the right that’d gotten him into this mess.

Driving down Smith, he keeps an eye out for a blue and red striped shirt. He spots him almost right away, an impressive ways down the street and walking into that little ma and pa coffee shop Bucky’s passed by a million times before. That kid may be short, but he’s got a set of legs on him. He must’ve been powerwalking. Given the circumstances, that’s hardly comforting.

* * *

Steve’s still huffing to himself when he yanks open the door to To Bean or Not to Bean and heads inside.  _God_ , some people are so fucking oblivious – like, first that asshole almost hits Steve with his car, and then he just sits there and  _stares_ at him as if it blows his mind that a pedestrian might  _actually_ be using the crosswalk when they’ve got the green light and the Right of Way? 

He takes a few deep breaths and shakes it off, heading past the counter and towards the back room, throwing on a tired smile and saying hi to his coworkers as he passes by. Their pay stubs come out every second Friday, but he’d been busy that day and then sort of forgot over the weekend. Abe’s in his office, glancing back and forth between some papers and a calculator. When Steve gives a light knock on his opened door, he glances over to him and then cracks a friendly smile.

“Ah, Steven,” he says, accent thick from his German roots. Steve’s always found it relaxing to listen to. Guessing exactly what he’s there for, he leans to the side and rummages through one of his drawers. Pulling out Steve’s pay stub, he says, “I hope you had a good weekend?”

“Yeah; can’t remember the last time I had a full one off, thanks again,” Steve replies, taking it from him. He’d been picking up some of his coworkers’ shifts over the past few months, on top of the hours he was already scheduled. Though he could sometimes be a bit of a handful in the face of customer who crossed a line, Steve’s always been a hard worker. Whenever his boss needs someone to take a bullet and cover a shift, Steve’s the first one offering to do it.

So, rewarding Steve for his devotion to the team as of late, Abe had privately spoken with Kitty, Janet, and Hank, who’d all agreed to each take one of  _Steve’s_ shifts in order to return the favor. The staff isn’t overly large where they are, so everyone looks out for one another. Steve had been touched when he found out during his shift the previous Thursday. That meant he got a nice  _five_ -day weekend, since he already had Monday and today off this week.

Abe waves his hand. “It was no problem. You earned it. And I trust you took full advantage of it and got some much-needed rest?”

“You could say that,” Steve replies with a smile. If you can call playing  _Call of Duty_ with Sam for almost ten hours straight on Friday, followed by getting the gang together for some beer pong and a night of bad horror movies on Saturday ‘getting some much-needed rest,’ then sure. He  _did_ spend most of Sunday curled up in bed, if that counts for anything. He’d felt like he’d been hit by a truck, mind you, but that was his own doing.

The face of that guy who’d almost  _actually_ hit him minutes before flashes through Steve’s mind, and he unintentionally clenches his jaw. As if he needed the reminder.

“Are you alright?” Abe asks, having noticed Steve’s sudden – even if subtle – change in demeanor.

Steve forces his features to relax again, nodding as he looks away, and bringing back that tiny smile to his lips again. “Yeah, yeah, just… Had a run-in with a stupid driver on the way over. It was fine though, nothin’ happened.”

“Ah. See, that is why I have never owned a vehicle in this city,” Abe comments, sounding amused. He’s probably imagining the earful Steve gave them. He wouldn’t exactly be wrong.

“Right?” Steve says in agreement. “I keep tryin’ to tell my roommate that but he says he’s happy drivin’ everywhere, so... what can you do, right?” They smile to each other and then Steve nods again, turning to head back out. “Anyways, thanks again. I gotta run, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Alright. Have a good night, Steven.”

“You too.” Steve walks away and starts to swing his bag from off his shoulder so he can stick his pay stub into the back pocket. Distractedly, he pushes open the door to the back room and heads out into the shop again, only to startle with a little “Oh!” when he doesn’t realize until the last second that he’s about to walk head-on into a customer. Coming to a stop – his hand halfway into his bag as he tries to multitask – he glances up to apologize, and then aborts that idea altogether as soon as he  _sees_ who’s staring back at him.

“Are you serious?” he rhetorically demands, his face falling flat. “You again? Really?”

It’s the guy who almost ran him over –  _of course it is, of course._ Now that Steve can actually see what he looks like, his first thought is that the guy isn’t, to his credit,  _unfortunate_ looking. He’s tall, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his leather jacket. His brown hair is tied back into a messy ponytail, and normally Steve isn’t overly into long hair, but this guy seems to be able to pull it off.

If Steve wasn’t  _mad_ at him, he might be willing to admit that he has a really nice jawline. If Steve wasn’t  _mad_ at him, he might even be willing to admit that the first place his gaze goes is actually the guy’s mouth. If Steve wasn’t  _mad_ at him, then this guy would have very nice eyes and strikingly prominent features that intrigue the artist inside of him. Basically, he’d be cute if he hadn’t almost hit Steve with his damn car.

But Steve  _is_ mad at him, and this guy  _did_ almost hit Steve with his damn car. So like hell if he’ll let himself notice any of those things.

“Yeah, about that… Listen, I know it might seem sort of creepy that I followed you in here--” the guy starts to say.

“Yeah, it  _is_ ,” Steve confirms.

The guy sighs and lowers his eyes, pulling his right hand from his pocket to rub at the back of his neck. “I know, I’m sorry. That’s actually what I came in here to say,” he replies, exhaling a quiet chuckle. He sounds almost  _nervous_. Steve narrows his eyes at him, already trying to figure out what his  _angle_ is. Is he trying to butter Steve up so he won’t go and press charges or something? That’d seem like a little bit of an overreaction – it’s not like he actually  _hit_ him or anything…

“You followed me in here to say you’re sorry?” he carefully asks.

The guy nods and meets his eyes again. Steve doesn’t like the way he’s making eye contact with him so intently.  _Seriously, what’s his deal?_ Quickly, he’s now the one glancing away. He’s still holding his bag against his stomach with one hand stuffed inside. He’s not entirely sure what to do. But… Trying to give this stranger the benefit of the doubt, he figures that maybe he shouldn’t be so hard on him. People make mistakes, and clearly if the guy felt bad enough about it that he’d track Steve down just to apologize, the mistake must’ve been an honest one.

“Okay…” he awkwardly says, shuffling back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Well… thank you for the apology.”

That seems to make the brunet happy, as his lips turn up into a relieved, lopsided smile. “Oh, um, I’m Bucky, by the way,” the guy – no,  _Bucky_ – quickly says, offering out his right hand. Steve can’t help but notice that his left once hasn’t moved out from his pocket yet.

Steve stares down at it, brows furrowing slightly. After a few awkward seconds of silence, he slides his hand from his bag and zips it up. Securing the strap across his shoulder again, he slowly stretches out and accepts the gesture. The shake is intentionally brief, but he replies out of courtesy anyways, “Steve.”

“Steve,” Bucky repeats, and for some weird reason his smile looks a bit warmer while he says it. It’s in a weird tone, too – like Steve just answered some deeper question that he doesn’t remember being asked.

“Uh. Yeah.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Steve,” Bucky politely says, “and again,  _really_ sorry about what happened back there. I got no excuse; I should’ve seen you.”

“Um… Well, it’s fine. I mean,  _I’m_ fine, so… No harm done.”

Then they just sort of  _stare_ at each other in silence again, and Steve wishes there was a hole in the wall that he could slink out of. He can’t seem to pin this guy as easily as he can with other strangers. He’s not even fully sure just at first glance if this guy’s a Dom. And  _if_  he is, it’s not the same as the creeps Steve usually comes across, like that douche on the bus, or the construction workers who think that catcalling is still appropriate these days, let alone appealing.

Steve’s instincts are usually dead on in situations like these, and yet he finds himself unable to read this  _Bucky_ guy. Something in his eyes –  _a strange and yet sort of_ beautiful  _mixture of blue and grey_ – seems kind and, dare he think it… good. What Steve tries to remind himself is that he’s been wrong about these sorts of things before. Anyone can come off the way they  _want_ you to see them when they have hidden motives.

Steve’s not exactly sure  _what_ this guy’s motive is, but Steve’s certain there is one.

And then, sure enough: “Listen, I don’t wanna come off too forward or anythin’, but if you’re not busy, I’d love to--”

 _Of course._ Guess Steve knows what sort of guy  _Bucky_ is after all. Dom. And a fucking pervert, surprise surprise. It’s the same damn story every time; some people just try to be smoother about it than others when it comes to the execution.

“Nope,” he cuts him off, abruptly looking away. He resumes moving and walks right around him.

“Whoah, hey,” he hears Bucky call after him, and then he’s catching up and trailing just a couple steps behind Steve. “Look, I’m  _sorry_ , I didn’t mean to… I’m not sure what it is you thought I was about to ask you, but I just wanted to know if you maybe wanted to grab a cup of coffee or somethin’ – so I could make up for it.”

Steve exhales a short, humorless laugh. Sure, ‘coffee’ – is  _that_ what they’re calling it now? Cute. He doesn’t understand what the fuck is some peoples’ problem. How many times is he going to have to deal with being propositioned for back alley blowjobs,

_(‘Look at those beautiful lips… You’re so pretty, you know that, sweetheart? Aww, look at that face… Such a full, gorgeous mouth – I bet you got that from your mother…’ They’d especially liked his lips. Swollen and bloody and split around the edges, they’d especially liked his lips…)_

or creeps wanting to scrape up his tailbone against a brick wall, just because they assume he’d be willing to spread his legs and wrap his ankles around their back with just a few sweet words? This is one of those times where he wishes puberty  _had_ blessed him with a growth spurt. If he was bigger – had more meat on his bones – then he wouldn’t have ‘twink’ written across his forehead, and maybe these fuckers wouldn’t even look at him twice.

Steve would be glad of that.

“In case you didn’t notice me comin’ out of the  _employees’_ part of the joint, I think I get more than my fill of coffee on a regular basis, thanks,” he shoots back, heading straight for the front door without slowing down even an inch.

For whatever reason, Bucky’s  _still_ following him. “But--”

Steve spins around to face him again, but he doesn’t stop moving. Now stepping backwards, he widens his eyes and gives Bucky an icy,  _fake_ smile. “Nope, I think I’m good! But good luck in your search,  _Bucky_ ,” he adds, biting out the name. Turning away again, he condescendingly calls out with his back now to him, “Try West Village!”

He can hear the guy start to stammer over a response, but then he hears nothing but silence, and this time, Bucky doesn’t follow.  _Good_. His gut feeling feels pretty confident now that Bucky has ‘Dom’ written all over him – and Doms like him? They only want one thing from people like Steve.

It makes him feel so much more victorious when he gets to have the last word.

* * *

Well…  _that_ had been a disaster. 

Bucky can’t sleep. He’s been lying in bed for almost an hour; flesh arm pillowed behind his head as he stares up at the ceiling. Feels like he’s had a frown permanently stamped onto his face since he left the coffee shop. He’s not exactly used to being turned down so bluntly, or even at all, really. But that’s not what’s been bothering him all evening.

It was the  _vehemence_ with which Steve had reacted towards him. At first, he thought that maybe the guy was still just  _really_ upset with him over the car thing. But Steve had seemed to accept his apology, and the hardness in his eyes had almost…  _softened_ , for just a second. That’d been the first glimpse at what they looked like when they weren’t  _completely_ filled with fire.

_God, those fuckin’ eyes… Just… wow. Never seen a thing in the world like ‘em._

Bucky doesn’t know what he’d said to make it go south as badly and as quickly as it did. Maybe he  _had_ been too forward by not creating more of a build-up to asking him out for a drink. The coffee part – that, he probably could’ve been a bit more mindful about. Not exactly the brightest moment he’s ever had. Of course the guy wouldn’t want that – he’s probably surrounded by the smell of ground up coffee beans so much that it permanently lives in all of his clothes.

Bucky doesn’t think that’s all that bad a thing, but he also doesn’t work as a barista. If he  _did_ , he’d probably hate the idea of coffee dates, too.

Fuck, that’s the wrong word. He hadn’t meant for it to be a  _date_. Well – part of him sort of did, but not if Steve didn’t want it to be. Mostly, he just really did want to make up for their first encounter. He wasn’t lying about that. He’s not sure… Maybe he’d come off arrogant or something. He certainly didn’t want to give the impression that he somehow believed that Steve  _had_ to accept his offer, even if Bucky was hoping he would.

That still doesn’t feel quite right, though. There seemed to be more to it than that. Steve’s little comment about West Village, that’d thrown Bucky off. What did  _that_ have to do with anything? He’s not dense; he knows what Steve was implying. But going back over the things he’d specifically said to Steve, Bucky can’t figure out how he’d led Steve to think that he was asking for  _anything other than coffee._

He releases a long, deep exhale. He knows what the logical thing to do is, and it’s  _nothing_. The guy clearly wants nothing to do with him, and somehow Bucky went and made himself out to look like a complete jerk. He thought he’d felt bad about almost hitting Steve with his car. He feels much worse about this; just wishes he knew what the hell he  _did_ so he could at least apologize again and set the record straight.

Maybe he should give it a bit of time and then try to catch Steve while he’s at work, so he can say sorry again and hopefully clear the air. Maybe they can start fresh, or… maybe they won’t. At least if that’s all that it ever amounts to, Bucky can walk away feeling like he did the right thing.

Or maybe he should just let it go and forget about him. He’s only known Steve for all of five seconds. It hardly warrants Bucky getting so bent out of shape about it. Especially for a guy who doesn’t usually dwell on things like this, Bucky’s giving this way too much thought. Seriously, he doesn’t know why he cares so much, or why something inside of him is telling him that he  _needs_ to try again.

He’s conflicted. He doesn’t want to creep Steve out and look like some sort of fucking stalker, but… he can’t shake the feeling that if he gives up this easily and doesn’t at least try to fix things – maybe undo his bad first impression and at least turn it into a slightly more positive one – he’ll be missing out on something. Something huge, maybe even something he needed. He doesn’t have a clue what that something could possibly  _be_ , but his heart’s practically screaming at him, and paired with the opposing argument his brain’s trying to simultaneously make, well.

Things sure do feel noisy inside.

Pulling his arm out from behind his hand, he covers his face with both hands and sighs. After scrubbing his face, he shakes his head and turns over onto his side, telling himself that he’s being ridiculous. At this point, he’s better off just trying to go to sleep.

All he winds up doing is staring off again – still frowning, still confused, and still unable to stop thinking about cerulean eyes and dirty blond hair.

**Author's Note:**

> Visual Idea for Steve (mostly the style of his hair, facial structure, and body build). However, I picture his hair as dirty blond, his stature as obviously being shorter, about 20-30 lbs skinnier, and having a slightly more hipster style in terms of clothing:
> 
> Visual idea for Bucky (literally JUST like this, metal arm and all):
> 
> The last two edits were done by the amazing [youneedtostrut](http://youneedtostrut.tumblr.com/), and all credit goes to them. The specific posts for those edits can be found [here](http://youneedtostrut.tumblr.com/post/81945584094/my-bad-dreams-linger-but-i-wouldnt-expect) and [here](http://youneedtostrut.tumblr.com/post/84788268095). If you think they're as beautiful as I do, you should go like and/or reblog them :) And maybe follow that amazing blog while you're at it, too ;) <3


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